The Crookston Area Chamber held its Candidate Forum last Tuesday night to allow the public to hear from the current candidates for the open spots for the Crookston Public School Board, Crookston City Council, Polk County Commissioners, State Representative District 1B, and State Senator District 1. The forum was moderated by Crookston Area Chamber Executive Director Mark Landa and Monica Custritz of the University of Minnesota Crookston. The forum had the candidates introduce themselves to the audience and answer two questions submitted by the public, then give a closing statement to the public.
The candidates running for Crookston City Council in Ward 4 are incumbent Donald R. Cavalier and his opponent Rob Silvers. We asked each candidate to introduce themselves and tell us what they hoped to do if elected as the representative of their Ward.
Q: Would you please tell us about yourself and why you are running?
Cavalier: I’m Don Cavalier, my wife, Mary, and I have resided in Crookston since 1967. First on South Ash, then we moved to North Ash. I’m running for reelection because I would like to continue to serve the City of Crookston and Ward 4 by accomplishing projects and proposed ideas that are very important to the development of our city. I enjoy being a part of this team and making good decisions. As a council member, I’ve spent a majority of my time serving on the following boards and committees; The Crookston Housing and Economic Development Authority (CHEDA), the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Crookston Development Partnership (DCDP), the Polk County Environmental Services Planning and Advisory Commission. As a past chairman of the City Park Board, I organized a Ward 4 committee that designed two surveys, one for the woods addition and one for the downtown area, which is part of Ward 4. The results of this survey are currently a work in progress. With matters of the City Council I’d shared, I’ve committed to offering an update on a new Crookston City Code of Conduct for the City Council and City staff. I worked with the city and Fire Department in setting up and managing the Ward 4 Flood Emergency Center and would like to thank the 50+ who weren’t residents and others who volunteered to walk the dikes at this important time. I’m excited and proud to be a candidate to serve a second term on the Crookston City Council as a representative of Ward 4. It would be a great privilege, and I would do so by listening to the concerns of our community members and using common sense with the goal of building a better Crookston. One that thrives economically and maintains that small-town feel in our neighborhoods. Crookston is moving forward, and I would like to see this progress continue.
Silvers: I’m Rob Silvers. I’m currently the Transportation Program Manager at Tri-Valley Opportunity Council. I also coach American Legion Baseball here in Crookston and am a Youth Sports official throughout the area, a member of the Crookston Eagles and the Crookston Baseball Association. As it’s been mentioned over the last couple of years, I think we’ve seen a change in our City Council and the way our city is going, and we need to continue that, and I think the best way to do that is with new faces and ideas. We need people who are proactive, not reactive, and a new generation of elected officials. One thing I see that Crookston needs is a dynamic plan for its future, one that benefits not only businesses but also the essential services required by our residents. Things that are lacking in our community such as adequate childcare. A plan that doesn’t barely maintain our infrastructure but modernizes it and ensures that all of our roads in all of our neighborhoods are treated equally and not neglecting some of the neighborhoods. That neglect will hurt Crookston in the long run. It has hurt since tax day, driving down Home Valley and in those neighborhoods. Crookston will have its 150th birthday since its incorporation coming up in 2029, and I believe it’s time for the City Council and the city to move past that old phrase, “Same old Crookston.” To not just hope to survive the next 150 years but to thrive.
Q: What are you hoping to accomplish if you are elected as a council member?
Cavalier: If I’m lucky enough to get reelected, I would be very happy to continue working on the surveys we took for Ward 4 and the Downtown Area. With the Corridor being planned out, we’ll be working on that until 2024, when they start to work on it, and there are a lot of other projects that we’re working on right now. We’re working with the city on the budget, which is very important, and hopefully, we can get that to where we can sponsor some of the requests that we had, like the Scruffy Tails Humane Society. That was something I think we could fund in the future because we need businesses like that to take care of the dogs and cats in some way. Again, there’s a lot of things on the council that we’re working on that I could talk all night about it, but the budget, the Downtown Corridor, those are the things that we’re looking at. We’re also keeping the Park Board busy with swimming and hockey and all that kind of stuff. It’s busy, and I enjoy serving on all those committees I serve on, and they keep the city running.
Silvers: I want to see more of a discussion on how we’re picking and choosing our projects and what’s being done. There’s a long history of us trying to limit our levees, which is great financially for the citizens, but it’s put us behind the eight ball. Now we’re seeing a massive levy this year that’s being proposed at the city council, trying to get salaries up on par with our neighboring towns. There’s a reason we keep losing employees to other towns and why we just lost a water main today. Coming into town, we’re being asked to conserve water for the second or third time this year because our infrastructure’s out of date. We haven’t kept up with our infrastructure with our people, or they’re trying to correct that now. We haven’t kept up with our physical infrastructure either. Our roads, water mains, and lift stations are all things we’ve had to do with projects to fix this year because they’re out of date. It’s going to be a long, costly process, but the good thing is that it doesn’t all have to come from our taxpayers. This city has no debt, which is very rare for a city, but there are a lot of avenues to get money to do these projects. There’s state infrastructure bonding and other programs out there that can help us fix our needs. They’re needs, not wants. We have needs in this community that we need to strive to move forward on.
Pictures of the candidates and the live stream of the forum can be found below-
